Where previous years have seen Archie Andrews (played by KJ Apa) and costars perform songs from musical version of Carrie and Heathers, this year the gang will tackle numbers from the cult movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch in Season 4, Episode 17.
What is the release date of Riverdale Season 4, Episode 17?
“Wicked Little Town” is due to air on The CW on Wednesday, April 15. The episode will air in Riverdale’s usual time slot of 8 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. CT.
For American fans who prefer to watch Riverdale online, Season 4, Episode 17 will be available to stream on The CW website and app shortly after the episode airs. Also available are the previous five episodes of the show for those who want to catch up on exactly what happened to Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse).
Internationally, Riverdale Season 4, Episode 17 will air on Netflix from Thursday, April 16 from 8:01 a.m. BST. Also available on the streaming service are all previous episodes of Riverdale, including all of Season 4 so far.
What will happen in Riverdale Season 4, Episode 17?
The official synopsis for “Wicked Little Town” reads: “When Mr. Honey forbids Kevin from performing a musical number from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, he and the gang rally against their principal by each performing a number from Hedwig, turning the Variety Show into a full-fledged musical.”
For viewers not familiar with the musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a Tony-winning play that became a 2001 movie starring John Cameron Mitchell as a transgender East German rock star who has botched gender reassignment surgery.
According to an interview between Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Decider, the episode came about after the Hedwig composer reached out to the show. He said: “Stephen Trask…reached out to my office and said, Stephen’s a huge fan of the show, he’d love to compose music for the show…and then in the room we were like, ‘guys, should we do Hedwig?’”
However, rather than have the cast of Riverdale play multiple characters from the movie, “Wicked Little Town” will see the cast all become Hedwig, as revealed by a promo image that showed the a number of show’s characters in the role’s characteristic curled wig.
Aguirre-Sacasa said of this, “We had to talk to Stephen and say, ‘hey, we really wanna do Hedwig, but we wanna change it up and there’s not gonna be one Hedwig; everyone’s gonna be taking a song’…and Stephen was fine with that…he really did let us make Hedwig our own.”
Among the songs confirmed to be performed are: Jughead performing “The Origin of Love”; “Exquisite Corpse,” sung by Jughead and Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart); “Midnight Radio” performed by Archie, Jughead, Betty, Veronica (Camila Mendes) and Kevin (Casey Cott) as iconic Archie Comics band The Archies; Cheryl Blossom (Madeleine Petsch) singing “Sugar Daddy”; Kevin performing “Tear Me Down” and “Wig In A Box”; and a whole cast rendition of “Wicked Little Town.”
Riverdale Season 4, Episode 17 airs on Wednesday, April 15 at 8 p.m. ET on The CW and April 16 on Netflix internationally.
